What is a gift of apostleship?
Is it around today?
Here is what was characteristic of the apostles and necessary.
(1.) that they should have seen the Lord, and been able to testify of him and of his resurrection from personal knowledge (John 15:27 ; Acts 1:21, 22 ; 1 Cor. 9:1 ; Acts 22:14, 15 ).
(2.) They must have been immediately called to that office by Christ (Luke 6:13 ; Gal. 1:1 ).
(3.) It was essential that they should be infallibly inspired, and thus secured against all error and mistake in their public teaching, whether by word or by writing (John 14:26 ; 16:13 ; 1 Thess. 2:13 ).
(4.) Another qualification was the power of working miracles (Mark 16:20 ; Acts 2:43 ; 1 Cor. 12:8-11 ).
The apostles therefore could have had no successors. They are the only authoritative teachers of the Christian doctrines. The office of an apostle ceased with its first holders.
In 2 Cor. 8:23 and Phil. 2:25 the word “messenger” is the rendering of the same Greek word, elsewhere rendered “apostle.”
